


I have no limit now to my love

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Series: You are always new [1]
Category: When Calls the Heart (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:33:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6108055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few weeks after Jack kisses Elizabeth for the second time (and third, and fourth, and fifth), he begins to wonder about chaperones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have no limit now to my love

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I mean, it's a G-rated show on the Hallmark channel, how could we not?

A few weeks after Jack kisses Elizabeth for the second time (and third, and fourth, and fifth), he begins to wonder about chaperones.

It’s absurd—they’ve already been courting a full year, talk about shutting the barn door after the horse—but there it is. Frankly, he’s just not sure they’re supposed to be _alone_ quite so often. Back in his hometown, you could walk a girl to school or down through the meadows, even hold her hand and kiss a little in dark corners at a barnhouse dance, and nobody would much mind. There were always a million eyes on you anyway, and no place to go that was both private and indoors. It took a lot to damage a girl’s reputation.

But he and Elizabeth aren’t kids. Her family is hours away by train, and even though everyone in Hope Valley knows his intentions, no one is explicitly _watching_ him—nobody’s Pa is waiting on the front porch with a shotgun, no one has sat him down in their living room and asked over lemonade if he plans to do right by their daughter. And now she owns a _house_ , for God’s sakes, with walls and a door and a bed with a chintz and calico quilt. And she loves him. She said so herself. Jack’s starting to feel like they might have a problem. Especially seeing as Elizabeth has started to insist on being kissed goodbye.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked just yesterday, wrinkling her nose at him. Jack hadn’t understood until she tipped her face up, catlike and expectant. They had been whitewashing the walls of her bedroom and although it had felt chaste enough during the day, the falling dark made everything too private; when he kissed her, Elizabeth backed her own self against the wall and sighed. Jack couldn’t bring himself to pull away for a good minute.

So: perhaps a chaperone isn’t out of the question.

He makes up his mind to ask Abigail at the cafe the next morning. After all, Jack decides, she knows them both; she likes them, and her status as a widow gives her a certain moral rectitude he thinks a good chaperone ought to have. “Abigail,” he says, taking a deep breath as she sets his eggs down in front of him. “I wonder if I might ask you a question that may be a bit...delicate in nature.”

Abigail tilts her head curiously. “Well, of course, Jack,” she says, turning to greet a scrum of millworkers shuffling to a round table in the corner. “How can I help?”

Jack hesitates for a moment, trying to think how to begin. “Before you and Mr. Stanton were married—” he says finally, but just then Clara knocks an entire bowl of grits onto the floor across the room and by the time it’s cleaned up Elizabeth has come through the door of the cafe, her cheeks flushed a pretty pink from the bite in the air outside. She’s wearing a dress the color of fresh snow, her russet hair spilling down over her shoulders. Jack remembers when she first arrived in Hope Valley, how she used to wear it pinned up and hidden under one of her many wide-brimmed hats; back then at least it was easier not to imagine filling his hands with the thick, heavy length of it, or the sounds she might make if he did.

“Constable,” she says sweetly, sitting down across from him; when her knee brushes his under the table, Jack feels it through three layers of fabric as sharply as if she’d grabbed him and squeezed.

“Miss Thatcher,” he replies, smiling as Abigail swings back around through the dining room, laying her free hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder in greeting.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she says, sounding harried. “You were going to ask me something.”

“Oh!” Jack feels his body warm, a faint irritation at Abigail for not somehow intuiting that this is a conversation he can’t have in front of Elizabeth—one, because he doesn’t want to embarrass her, and two, because suddenly he fears suggesting a chaperone in the first place might give her the wrong idea: that he doesn’t respect her independence, or worse, that he can’t control himself.  “You know,” he says awkwardly, “I think I’m actually all right.”

“What was that all about?” Elizabeth asks when Abigail’s disappeared back into the kitchen, skirting around Bill, who’s lurking at the far end of the room like a toad on a log.

Jack shakes his head. “Mountie business.”

Elizabeth nods at that, apparently content to take him at face value. “I want to cook you dinner tonight,” she announces, leaning across the table like a little girl with a secret. Then, misunderstanding the look on his face, “What? I _can_. I can follow a recipe as good as anyone, Jack.”

“Of course you can,” Jack says, and wonders what the appropriate course of action is here, if he should bring flowers or cherry cordial, if he should just give up and grow wings to fly to Hamilton and ask her father’s permission for her hand. Dear God, dinner in her little house with its cheerful curtains and the bedroom that’s right behind her icebox. The things he’s thinking about shouldn’t be allowed outside the sanctity of a marriage.

Elizabeth sighs happily. “Come by around five o’clock.”

 

She cannot follow a recipe, as it turns out.

“It’s supposed to be a lamb pie,” she says, plunking the burnt remains on the table in front of him and pouting prettily. Her mouth is as pink as the inside of a shell. Jack wipes his palms on his trousers and looks away. 

“If you cut through the crust it should be all right,” he says, leaning over to inspect the pie. He brought flowers in the end, not roses for love or lilies for beauty but stalwart bluebells, like one brings when calling on one's aunt. They sit lined up at his elbow, nodding their tiny blue heads at propriety. 

Elizabeth huffs, dropping into a chair. She’s braided up her hair and donned an apron for the occasion, playacting the part of frontier hostess. Jack remembers eating steak and candied pears at her father’s house in Hamilton. “I picked up a basket of Abigail's rolls,” she confesses. "Just in case." Under the table, her foot taps against his, a deliberate touch.

Dinner is uneventful, both of them picking over the burnt pie for edible bits. Elizabeth relays the latest news from her sisters, judiciously skirting the issue of Julie and Tom; Jack tells her a story about Rip and an unfortunate squirrel, then another about Rip and a less unfortunate badger. They hold hands over the table, even though it makes it perilously hard to eat. Elizabeth’s fingers are small and clean, with neat, half-moon nails. Jack begins to relax by degrees—surely a chaperone wasn’t needed for this, burnt pie and idle conversation and holding hands like children? Surely this is perfectly appropriate, even alone in a house with a closed door and drawn curtains?

But then: “Would you like to take our tea on the chesterfield?” Elizabeth asks, glancing at him sideways under her eyelashes.

“I—huh.” Jack huffs out a little laugh, looks down at his plate and then back up. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

Elizabeth blinks at him, all innocence. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

Jack can think of a dozen replies off the top of his head, starting with the the plushness of her pink bottom lip and ending with the feeling of her warm knee under his fingertips that rainy afternoon in the mine. “I—ah. No reason,” he says finally. “The chesterfield it is.”

They sit. The tea is overhot, a little bitter; Jack concentrates on sipping it slowly, glad for something to do with his hands. It’s awkward, suddenly, the silence unspooling between them, a distance far greater than the several inches of upholstery. He’s never felt like this with a woman before. If nothing else, Rosemary made it easy, her ability to fill any silence with chatter and cheerfulness. With Elizabeth, Jack gets the sense of her listening so carefully that sometimes it feels safer not to say anything at all.

“Well,” he says finally, when the tea is finished. “It’s getting late.”

Elizabeth sets her cup down on the side table, then reaches out and curls her hand around his wrist. “Jack,” she says quietly, and he kisses her to calm himself down, like swallowing a dose of cod liver oil in one draught to get it over with.

For one second her mouth is slack and shocked, then it curls into a smile. “There now, was that so bad?” she murmurs when he pulls away. Her voice is rich with something that is not quite reproach.

“Elizabeth,” he tries, laughing a little, but she’s holding her face in a way he now knows means she wants to be kissed. It would take a greater man than he to refuse.

She makes a wordless sound when he leans back in, something soft and self-satisfied, like a lap cat getting its wish for cream. Jack starts to sweat. He cups her neck carefully, bracing his free hand against the chesterfield’s elegant back. Her mouth is hot from the tea, and—oh mercy—open.

Jack’s kissed women before. Longer and more improperly than he’s kissed Elizabeth, certainly, including one especially memorable encounter with Rebecca Bishop in a cornfield, but it has never before felt this _dangerous_. Fully upright with Elizabeth on a davenport feels like teetering on the knife-edge of civility in a way rolling in the grass with Rebecca never did. 

Elizabeth inches closer, squirming slightly. Her mouth is very wet, and very mobile; Jack has never kissed a girl who kissed _back_ quite so much before. “Jack,” she sighs, sliding nearer still and reaching up toward his face. When she shifts, her chest presses lightly against his braced arm, just the barest suggestion of roundness. Jack freezes; Elizabeth doesn’t.

“What is it?” she whispers, even though the expression on her face suggests she knows perfectly well. It’s not a teasing expression, though, or even amusement; it’s something open and taunt and coiled. Jack can barely breathe for looking at her.

“I should leave,” he says, not recognizing his own voice. She hasn’t shifted away and he can feel her every inhale, the subtle increase and decrease of pressure.

“That would probably be wise,” Elizabeth agrees, though still she makes no move to pull back. It’s the first time they’ve acknowledged, even tacitly, that they’re skirting the edges of acceptability. The heat of her body bleeds through her silk dress. “But not yet.”

Jack swallows hard. “Not yet.”

Elizabeth kisses him, then. She hasn't kissed first since that horrible day in the field, her pinched drawn face and _let me c_ _onvince you._  It feels like an even greater breach of etiquette now, here on her chesterfield after night has fallen. _City girl,_  Jack thinks somewhere in the back of his addled brain. _Worldly._ Rosemary kissed first too sometimes, although never quite like this. Jack has a sudden flash of Elizabeth back in Hamilton, sitting at the piano beside Charles in the lamplight, and before he can manage to quell the impulse he pushes his tongue into her mouth.

Elizabeth makes a sound at that, but she doesn’t stop him—in fact, she leans in even closer, her short nails scraping lightly over the back of his skull. Jack puts a hand on her rib cage, higher than he’s dared before, his palm resting in the liminal space between the safety of her waist below and the outright ruin of above. She’s wearing something reassuringly thick underneath her dress, stiff with boning, but through the hazy fog in his mind Jack can’t help but notice that in spite of that she feels—God forgive him— _pliant_.

“All right,” he says, pulling back abruptly, breathing hard. He respects Elizabeth. He loves her. God, he wants to make her his _wife_. “Now it’s—it’s definitely time for me to go.”

Elizabeth looks downright dazed, her cheeks pink and mouth just the slightest bit swollen. “Yes,” she says faintly. “You’re probably correct.”

She walks him to the door in silence, both of them too stunned speak. Jack forgets all good sense and manners and doesn't even remember to thank her for dinner.

He kisses her goodnight, though. It’s hopelessly rude, especially considering neither of them manage to say the actual word aloud first, but she’s rosy and mussed and he can’t help it. Elizabeth inhales sharply, pressing her whole body against his for one incandescent second before Jack remembers himself and tears away. He’s out the door and walking without another word.

Back at the jailhouse, he shoos Rip outside and sits heavily on the edge of the cot, something slippery and shaking taking up residence in the joints of his knees. It’s a sin, he knows, and a massive insult to her honour besides, but he takes himself in hand anyway. He spills onto the floor in two quick strokes. Then he wipes everything down with a wet handkerchief and climbs into bed, trying not to think of anything at all.

 

The next day, he stops by the schoolhouse during dinner hour, loitering in the doorway as the morning’s lesson draws to a close. He feels awkward and deeply out of place, like he hasn't since he was a half-grown lad, hands and feet too big for his body. When Elizabeth catches sight of him, she turns brick red.

“Please take you dinner pails outside, children,” she announces in her crisp teacher voice. “And say hello to the constable.”

“Hello, constable Thornton,” a dozen tiny voices chorus before the room dissolves into a flurry of scraping chairs and banging pails. It isn’t warm enough for lunch outdoors, strictly speaking, a cold drizzle misting miserably over the fields, but Jack isn’t about to object on their behalf. What he needs to say shouldn’t have any witnesses, let alone the innocent ears of children.

“Hello, constable,” Elizabeth says once they’re alone, all tart consonants and properness. Still, Jack can’t help but notice that she doesn’t exactly look unhappy to see him. He takes a deep breath.

“Miss Thatcher. Elizabeth.” He stops. It’s one thing to hear it in his head, quite another to say it to her clever face. She’s caught wind of his discomfort and is looking less embarrassed by the second, smiling her kittenish half-smile that means mischief. Jack doesn’t think he can bear to be teased. “Forgive me,” he blurts. “But do you think we might need a chaperone?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widen. “A chaperone?”

“Yes.” Jack fists both hands against his thighs, cursing himself. “I just thought, after last night, that it might be prudent—” And by God, now they’re talking about it, here in the bright damning light of day. He remembers the soft press of her chest and finds himself unable to speak.

“No,” Elizabeth says after a long pause. The sound of her voice, sudden and ringing as a bell, seems to surprise them both equally.

Jack waits, but she doesn’t say anything further. Elizabeth Thatcher, speechless. And here he thought it would be a cold day in hell. “What?” he prompts roughly, beyond manners. Dear lord, _what?_

Elizabeth closes her mouth. Her face is as pink as the dawn. “Exactly what I said. No, Jack, I don’t think we need a chaperone.”

“You don’t?” Jack gapes at her for a moment. He supposes by now he ought to be used to Elizabeth contradicting him at every available opportunity, but he hardly thought she’d argue with him on this point. “But—”

“Jack,” she says, her voice brisk again. “If I was truly worried about propriety, I’d be back in my parents’ parlour listening to a lecture from Viola about hem length and heel height. But if it makes you more comfortable, I suppose we could endeavor to see each other in more public settings from now on.” She tilts her head to the side in a way that manages to suggest this is his loss and his loss only. “If you’d like.”

That’s not what Jack would like, of course. What Jack would _like_ is to be alone with her always, to peel down her stockings and untie her stays and see her long hair spread out across the pillows in his—

Jack clears his throat, too loudly. “I think that would be best,” he says.

 

So: public settings it is. Jack takes her to dinner at Abigail’s, to hear Irish music at the saloon on Saturday evening, on endless revolutions arm-in-arm through the town. At the conclusion of these dates he kisses her chastely on the cheek at her doorstep, never daring to step through the entry.

It’s driving him mad.

Elizabeth, for her part, seems intent on driving him even madder. Lately she’s been letting skirts fall against him under Abigail’s cheery tablecloths, stroking the crook of his elbow while they walk arm-in-arm, pressing close when they sit side-by-side in church. Holding hands with her feels almost indecent now, the way she’s taken to twining and untwining their fingers, a ceaseless serpentine motion that makes Jack think of the sea and also not of the sea at all.

At first, Jack didn’t understand what she was up to. Then he did, and it made him hopping mad for two days straight. It’s her honour, after all—they would be married by now if he’d had his way, safe in the sacred covenant to do as they damn well pleased. She was the one who let the misunderstanding with Charles carry on so long. Jack doesn’t think it’s right to tease a man about something he wants so desperately, something he can hardly even help.

But Elizabeth cajoles him out of his bad mood as easily as breathing, with her wide innocent eyes and her curly smiles that aren’t innocent at all, winding her fingers around the lapels of his red coat. Jack gives up, resigned to letting her tease him right up until the altar if that’s what makes her happy.

And then, one day, it dawns on him that it might not be all tease.

“Goodnight,” Elizabeth is telling him, perched on her front steps with one arm holding her hair out of her eyes against the sudden wind. The look on her face is the living embodiment of a dare, _I bet you can’t resist_. For the first time, it occurs to Jack that she might not want him to.

Jack swallows. He thinks of her face on the chesterfield, _we don’t have to talk_ , and then, later, _not yet_. He thinks of the way she holds her face up when she wants to be kissed.

“Invite me in,” he tells her, before he can stop himself. His heart is beating like a drum.

“In for what, constable?” Elizabeth asks, but she’s smiling, already drawing them both through the door and into her little house, her footsteps light and quick. And then they're standing together in the half-dark of her sitting room, achingly, hopelessly alone. Jack waits, studying her. The look on her face tells him everything he needs to know.

This time, he backs her against the wall himself.

“Jack,” Elizabeth gasps, laughing now, but her arms are around his neck and Jack understands, finally, deep and elemental the way he understands his own name, that she wants him to. It shouldn’t be so unexpected—Jack knows most girls enjoy kissing their beaus, that’s not a revelation. Heck, Jack has kissed girls and had them enjoy it, has even been with girls who demanded to be kissed, like it was a trolley fare to be paid if he wanted to continue courting. But _this—_

“Jack,” Elizabeth says again, and now she’s not laughing at all. There’s that look on her face again, taut and seeking and heavy-lidded.

—This is not that.

He doesn’t quite press her into the wall, but it’s a near thing, his hands in her hair and her tongue in his mouth. There’s maybe an inch of space left between their bodies, room for the holy ghost. But then Elizabeth arches and there’s nothing, not even enough to slide a piece of parchment through, and _still_ Jack doesn’t pull away, not for minutes upon helpless minutes. He’s hard underneath his trousers, heaven help him, but her skirts are so voluminous he doesn’t think she can tell.

He leaves, in the end, thank god. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, but he leaves. He nudges Rip out the door of the jail, alleviates his discomfort as quickly and efficiently as possible, and falls into a shallow, restless sleep.

 

“We should go on a picnic,” Elizabeth tells him, when they run into each other at the mercantile several days later. It's full spring now, warm enough to go outside with no coat, the ground finally dry and green after the long wet thaw. Through the window, the sun hits her hair and turns it gold.

“I’ll get lunch from Abigail’s,” she assures him, when he hesitates. “You won't have to eat my cooking.”

“No, it's not that,” Jack says, leading her out onto the porch of the shop where they can talk more quietly. When he takes her arm he thinks of the way she pressed herself against him the other night, the warm length of her body molding to his like it was built specifically for that purpose.

“We’ll be outdoors, constable,” Elizabeth says, reading his thoughts like one of her schoolbooks. “Surely you're not worried about the need for supervision in the middle of an open field in broad daylight.”

Frankly that's exactly what Jack’s worried about, and he feels that surge of resentment again. It must be easy to be a woman, he thinks. He wants to kiss the smugness right out of her, which he recognizes is deeply beside point here. Elizabeth is looking at him expectantly, her chin tipped up toward his. He suspects, not for the first time since he met her, that he is wildly out of his depth.

“A picnic sounds lovely,” Jack agrees.

They set out on Saturday afternoon, taking a hamper full of Abigail’s sandwiches and coffee. Elizabeth wears her riding clothes, her hair pinned up in a practical knot at the crown of her head. She’s a much better on horseback than she was, Jack notices, calm and capable and authoritative. He tries his best to ignore her legs, encased in thick felted pants. Lately he’s become almost absurdly aware of her clothing, all her layers and fripperies, her shawls and coats. 

“There,” Elizabeth says once they’re settled on the blanket, sounding satisfied. The mountains rise up all around them, blue sky and wispy white clouds. “Isn't this nice.”

It _is_ nice, Jack thinks, relaxing for the first time in what feels like weeks. He loves the outdoors, the open space beyond the confines of town, and more than that he likes sharing it with her. “It’s lovely,” he says, and reaches for the thermos of coffee.

It’s one of their better outings. They eat their sandwiches and talk about inconsequential things, the town and the timber mill, if they’ll have to build more houses as more and more new men arrive with their families. Afterwards Elizabeth reads aloud to him from a book of poems, which is one courting activity in particular Jack has always found deeply boring. He lets her voice wash over him and studies her face instead, her wide blue eyes and her clever upturned nose. He thought she was smug-looking when they met, too proud and vain to be pretty. He doesn’t think that anymore.

“Your turn,” Elizabeth announces after several minutes, dropping the book in his lap and lying back on the blanket. “Now you read to me.”

Jack looks at her in surprise. “I’m not much of a reader,” he says slowly, turning the book over to inspect the cover. Keats.

Elizabeth huffs. “Oh Jack, I don’t care. Reading isn’t the point.” She’s closed her eyes, her eyelashes heavy on her cheeks and yet somehow still expectant. With the sun and the grass and the bees swirling around them she looks like a bad fairy, something wild that came down from the mountain.

 _What is the point?_ Jack doesn’t ask. Instead he opens the book and clears his throat. “Bright star,” he begins quietly. “Would I were as steadfast as thou art…”

She makes a better show of listening than he did, lying on her back with her head pillowed on a woolen scarf, hands folded primly on her stomach. She looks perfectly, immaculately calm. As he reads, Jack imagines reaching out and running the tip of his finger along the silky line of her eyebrow, down across the faintly freckled bridge of her delicate nose. Brushing his thumb across her plush bottom lip, perhaps, dragging it down and then—

Elizabeth’s eyes open slowly, curious.

“You stopped,” she notes.

That is in fact the case, though Jack hadn’t realized it until this moment. He swallows thickly. “I got distracted,” he admits.

Elizabeth looks pleased. “By what, exactly?” she prods, smiling, bumping him lightly with her ankle—making no move, he notices, to sit up. Then, when he doesn’t answer, “Jack?”

He grabs her ankle before she can nudge him again—before he knows he’s going to do it, almost. His hand fits all the way around. He squeezes once, gently. Elizabeth isn’t smiling anymore.

“You know what,” he murmurs, thumb notched against her ankle bone. It isn’t the most scandalous part of her he’s touched, strictly speaking, being far less risque than her knees and fully covered by her thick stocking besides, but it is the most scandalous part of her he’s touched without an excuse.

Elizabeth licks her lips. “Jack, stop reading now.”

Jack sets the book down beside the picnic hamper, chagrined to notice his hand is shaking. He still hasn’t let go of her ankle. “What will we do instead, Miss Thatcher?” he asks, trying nobly for levity. He thinks that if he can just manage to make her laugh, this fever may break and save them both.

Elizabeth lifts herself onto her elbows, considering him for a moment. “Come here.”

Jack yanks his hand off her with almost comical speed. “Elizabeth—”

“Jack.” She’s smiling now. “Come here.”

Jack comes. Partly because he’s starting to feel like the shrinking violet to her swain, and partly because she is the most singularly beautiful thing he’s ever seen and he’d be a fool not to. He lies down next to her on the picnic blanket, propping himself up on one elbow. He feels faintly otherworldly, like perhaps this is happening to someone else. “All right. Now what?”

Elizabeth laughs delightedly. And Jack was wrong, because it doesn’t break the moment, not even the smallest bit. “Guess,” she says imperiously, dropping down flat on her back.

“Square dancing?” Jack suggests, leaning over her. His heart is thumping so hard he half-thinks she’ll be able to feel it. “A round of pinochle?”

“Don’t you need four players for pinochle?” Elizabeth asks softly. Her face is so close Jack can feel her breath.

He shakes his head. “Just two,” he says, and kisses her.  

From the first there's nothing courtly about it, Jack licking his way into her mouth with a singularity of purpose and Elizabeth’s low, quiet whimper. She’s got one hand on his shoulder, her fingers opening and closing rhythmically. The other is wrapped around his suspenders, clutching tight. Right away, Jack knows they won't be standing up for a while.

“I love you,” he tells her, pulling back for a moment, leaning his forehead against hers. It feels important to him all of a sudden—that she knows it, that she knows he’ll take care of her. That she's certain his heart is true.

“I love you too,” Elizabeth says breathlessly—and maybe that was part of it, also, that Jack wanted to hear her say the words again. It's happened to him before—broken promises, unexpected losses. He wants to be absolutely sure.

“I just want you to know that my intentions—” He stops. He wants to tell her he intends to marry her but he rather thinks that ruins the romance of the thing, to tell her now in a field instead of later with a ring on bended knee. Not to mention that sounds like just the sort of thing a lad says to his girl before he convinces her to let him lift her skirts. “My intentions are honourable,” he finishes lamely, which is a bald-faced lie. Mary mother of Jesus, he has her on her _back._

“Mine are too,” Elizabeth says, widening her eyes playfully. Then, while Jack is still laughing, she curls her hand around his suspenders again and murmurs, “Jack, kiss me.”

Well, if she’s going to trouble herself to say it out loud. Jack leans back down and makes a rather good go of it, if he says so himself; by the time they pull apart Elizabeth is red-faced and gasping, and both of them are breathing too hard to speak. Jack dithers a moment before continuing, dipping his head and putting his mouth on her warm, white neck. That’s something he’s done before, in clinches with Rosemary, with Rebecca Bishop in the cornfield. It feels a long sight safer than staring at the expression on Elizabeth’s face.

Apparently not: “ _Jack_ ,” gasps, her voice pitching up a whole octave.  

Jack stops dead. Her body has gone still and shocked in a way it never has before, no matter what he's been doing to her, and her hand on his shoulder has become a claw. He rests his forehead against her shoulder, feeling faintly amused. So, Elizabeth Thatcher of Hamilton has never engaged in necking. “I apologize,” he says, swallowing disappointment. It was bound to happen, after all. They were bound to reach a point where she told him to stop. “I didn’t—”

But Elizabeth is shaking her curly head. “Do that again.”

_Do that—_

Jack’s eyes widen, shock and _interest_ ; he’s grateful she can’t see the surprise on his face. 

He takes her instruction gently at first, then a little harder, sucking softly at the thin skin below her hairline. She tastes like soap and like salt. Jack runs his free hand up and down her arm, over her rib cage; when his thumb skates an inch or so higher he hears her inhale.

Jack shudders, he can't help it. He’s humming inside like an electric lamp. He wants to ask her what it feels like, if her skin is tight and prickling the way his is, if her whole body feels overfull of blood somehow. He noses back behind her ear, and Elizabeth whines.

“Closer,” she says. “Jack. Can you get—” She snuggles nearer without waiting for him to answer, her hip pressing right up against the bulge at the front of his trousers. Without meaning to, Jack lets out a sound like a quiet growl.

Elizabeth is staring at him, wide-eyed. Jack briefly weighs whether or not to apologize. He _should—_ good breeding and sense and manners dictate it—but on the other hand he isn’t sure how much she knows, if she’s even aware of what she’s touching. Jack grew up listening to other boys’ rough talk in the schoolyard, has watched cows and chickens and pigs during springtime—has even, God help him, seen a drawing or two of women without their small clothes on. He knows sex. But Elizabeth is a lady, and a city girl besides. It’s entirely possible she might not know.

“Forgive me,” he says finally, swallowing with a thick click in the back of his throat. Neither of them has moved their hips.

“For what?” Elizabeth asks, peering at him intently. Studying him, Jack realizes, like he’s a blackboard problem she can't quite solve. “Jack, please. Come here.”

Then her arms are around his neck, hands everywhere, on his back and in his hair and, oh God, _pulling—_ Jack laughs nervously into her mouth. “Elizabeth, sweetheart.” He can barely speak. “We’re going to get ourselves into trouble here.”

“No, we’re not,” Elizabeth insists stubbornly, yanking at his suspenders. They’re almost tussling now, their mouths fused together like a slow argument instead of kissing, all mixed up, his elbows on either side of her head and still she won’t stop pulling at him. Jack’s almost properly atop now, almost laying on her, and God, he _tries_ to stay on his knees, but he takes up more room between her legs that way and forcing her to part them feels indecent. Only then he’s laying down on her fully, pressing her flat into the picnic blanket, and he's not sure it's any better.

“Elizabeth,” he groans, pulling away from her mouth to calm himself, to breathe.

Elizabeth has gone blessedly, finally still. “There,” she says. “There now.” And God in heaven, her _face—_ her eyes are closed, but the expression on those fine features is unmistakably pleasure, as in bodily, as in carnal. Jack puts his head down on the blanket beside hers and bites his tongue so hard he can taste blood. He didn't know women could feel lust. 

“Elizabeth,” he tries again, pushing himself up on his palms. “Sweetheart, listen to me, I can’t  _do_ this to you—”

Moving is a mistake. It shifts his weight, which in turn shifts his hips. Just infinitesimally, but apparently Elizabeth feels it like an earthquake because she gasps, face colouring to a deep beet red.

“I—oh Jack, I apologize,” she pants immediately, looking embarrassed for the first time since they started. “I forgot myself.”

And just like that Jack can't ignore it any longer, the unquestionable fact that lying between Elizabeth Thatcher’s legs is giving her pleasure in a way that at least approximates his own, that in some private place she must feel—

Jack takes the Lord’s name in vain, in broad daylight, in front of a lady.

He also moves his hips again.

“ _Jack_.” Elizabeth grips his arm tight enough that he can feel the dig of her nails through the flannel. Never before has he seen anything resembling the expression on her face. This is completely indecent, he thinks hazily; he needs to put a stop to it, once and for all. But Jack is so compelled by the notion that women—that _Elizabeth—_ is capable of this kind of desire that there’s no way he could tear himself away from her now even if he wanted to: not with the smell of her all around him, the desperate way she’s gasping into his mouth.

He moves again, exerting a little more pressure, tensing every muscle in his own body to keep himself under control. He’s terrified of disgracing himself in front of her; he’s not entirely sure how much longer he can do this. But Elizabeth is wriggling underneath him now, just a bit, not like she’s trying to get free but more like—like—

Elizabeth lets out a soft cry then, her whole body taut and coiled underneath him for one, two, three long moments before she relaxes again, burying her face in the damp crook of his neck. Jack strokes her hair, makes soothing sounds without quite knowing why. The truth is, he’s utterly baffled. He knows something just happened, but he’s not entirely sure what it was.

“Elizabeth,” he says after a long moment of silence, his voice strangled. He can feel his shirt sticking to his back with sweat. “I—” But it’s no use. He doesn't have the words.

“Oh Jack.” She gulps wetly against his neck, clutching at his shoulders. She seems to be hiding her face.

“I love you,” Jack blurts. Something about her bent curly head is making him feel almost foolishly tender. “Sweetheart, come on, let’s sit up now.” He’s never dared to be so familiar with her before, but she _is_ , isn’t she? She’s his sweetheart. They certainly can't stand on ceremony anymore.

Elizabeth comes reluctantly, like a sleepy child pulled from bed. She looks a sight, all mussed hair and heavy eyes. They’ll have to right themselves or everyone in town will know what they've been doing. “Oh Jack, I’m so embarrassed,” she murmurs, pressing both palms to her flushed cheeks. “What you must think of me.”

“Don’t. Please,” Jack begs, catching one of her wrists and tugging her hands away. Then, almost unable to stop himself, he cups her hot face, rubbing both thumbs along her fine cheekbones. He feels oddly proprietary about her now, like he can touch more of her and get away with it, like she’s _his_. “I think you’re lovely.” It's true. He may have no earthly idea of what just occurred, or the particulars of why she's embarrassed, but he does know she looked utterly beautiful with her face transformed by desire.

Elizabeth laughs. “And I think _you’re_ sparing my feelings,” she says, clearing her throat and standing up. She pats ineffectually at her hair, looking everywhere but him.

Jack can’t bear it. “I’m not,” he assures her. “Elizabeth. I promise you, on my life I’m not.”

She looks at him then, and at last it seems that she believes him. “All right,” she says quietly, taking in his own flushed face and mussed hair, his knees that he's drawn up to his chin like a child to hide his lap. “Shall we head back to town then? Before we—” She breaks off, gesturing vaguely between them, then looks away again, laughing.

"What?" Jack asks.

"Before we do anything _worse_ ," Elizabeth finishes, shaking her head helplessly. 

What _worse_ might possibly entail snakes into Jack's brain and he finds all he can do is nod, reaching down for the picnic basket. Good grief, he can barely stand.

He shakes out the blanket and loads up the horses, stopping to pat their velvety muzzles and feed them a pair of leftover apples in silent thanks for their stoic animal discretion. When he turns back he sees Elizabeth is smiling at him, mouth smudged and eyes shining. Jack ducks his head, smiles back.


End file.
